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Comment by MichaelZuo | Hacker News Reader

It seems fairly straightforward to just ask verbal questions?

For example, if the position is mostly coding C then just get them to explain how some X interacts with some Y and how that interacts with some Z. Maybe with a copy of of K&R and get them to point to page so and so.

Do that a few times, maybe use a whiteboard, and I think any experienced C developer will be able to tell who's faking it and who really understands within 2 or 3 iterations.

Even if there are no experienced folks in the company, then it will take longer but, after an hour or two it'd be pretty difficult for anyone to fake a solid understanding of hundreds of pages of K&R.

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Not the point you’re making but in a C shop, if I interview and somebody pulls out K&R in 2023, they’re not getting hired.

I get the wider point you’re making, and yes, a chat can help. Elsewhere in a reply to this I talk about how I personally like to do that, but the problem is, a significant number of people can talk about coding but can’t actually code.

I once interviewed somebody who had passed 3 previous calls. Asked them to implement fizzbuzz. Couldn’t.

That is a real problem. It’s not myth.

As such, I’m not hiring somebody without seen them writing code the same way I wouldn’t hire a designer without seeing their actual personal portfolio.

> a significant number of people can talk about coding but can’t actually code.

We removed pseudocode from our pre-screening due to this. Some people are absolutely great with English and pseudocode, but can't write a for loop, in their "preferred" language of their choosing. I'm sure they could be great at programming...eventually.

A Zed Shaw's Learn C the Hard Way fan, I see.

Asking people face-to-face is a lot different then asking over a phone, it's easily 1/10th the info, or less, so of course the percentage of fakers is much higher.

> It seems fairly straightforward to just ask verbal questions?

This is basically my interviewing POV. If you've done the work, you can talk about the work intelligently if I ask some questions about it. If I ask you how you would think about solving problem XYZ, you can probably verbally think through how you would solve the problem, what a solution might take.

I write a lot of C and gave up on reading K&R as it is just too outdated.

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